I’m now three posts into my shapes of stories blog series and I’ve discussed Vonnegut’s “man-in-a-hole” and “boy meets girl” story shapes. Before I write another post about a specific shape, I want to interrupt my regularly scheduled programming and beat my chest for a couple minutes about why we can’t let jargon-heads turn storytelling into another meaningless buzzword.

Part three of an ongoing blog series I’m dedicating to the Shapes of Stories, as theorized by sci-fi author Kurt Vonnegut. This post discusses the story shape that Vonnegut calls “Boy Meets Girl.” The story doesn’t have to be about a sweet young man meeting the girl or boy of his dreams but it’s an easy way to remember the shape.

While I’m far from the first to reference author Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant presentation on the shapes of stories, it may be new to many marketers, and it’s full of indispensable lessons that can help us recognize and tell stories.

The first Vonnegut story shape I’ll be discussing is called “man in a hole.” Its shape is simple: someone gets into trouble, then gets out of it and is that much better off for the lessons learned.

Whenever I hear advertising and storytelling used interchangeably, I cringe.

That’s not to say marketing creative can’t tell a story, but let’s be honest — it usually doesn’t. If I asked you to tell me the best story you’ve heard in the last week, are you really going to bring up a retargeted banner ad? Does YouTube pre-roll ever overshadow the video that follows it?

The first step to collectively improving our storytelling skills is to recognize when a story is smack dab in front of us.

Inbound marketers dream about evergreen long form articles, viral infographics, and shareable video, but in reality, just 38% percent of B2C marketers and 30% of B2B marketers find content marketing effective.

​Providing valuable information to consumers in order to build brand affinity and increase the likelihood of a future purchase is hardly a new marketing device, so why are us marketers struggling so mightily at crafting killer content?

​I’ll posit that part of the problem in many organizations is the lack of a standardized framework that breaks content development into clearly defined stages of completion. Ad-hoc content development will always miss integral components required for content to be effective to the bottom-line of a marketing budget.

These are five simple steps that I’ve found incredibly useful in codifying content development for both our B2B and B2C clients at Digital Surgeons, and for my personal and firm-wide thought leadership.